gender neutral {birds and bees} baby shower inspiration

If you are in our Toronto store in the next few weeks check out this fun gender neutral baby shower display that I put together with some help from Tanya of Save the Date Events and Doris from Love Lettering.

I took photos of all of our baby shower party ideas before setting up the display so I could share them with you here on the blog. Our colour palette was pool blue, pea shoot green, white and a touch of yellow. 

As you can see from the party favours, food and decor elements, our shower theme is "the birds and the bees". 

The sweet bee and blue bird cakepops were made by Save the Date Events. I painted some mason jars in blue and green and used them to display the cakepops. To keep the cakepops in place, I used a wire grid lid and added a cup of sugar to the bottom of the mason jar.

We recently installed some new equipment in our Toronto office so we can print custom labels. I tested a number of different label shapes with custom designs for the shower favours. We'll be offering custom label services soon, stay tuned for more details.

I created a few different party favours for the store display. A couple of our glass containers were filled with honey and decorated with custom labels, ribbon and wraphia. Our new white bird cages were filled with egg shaped candies and decorated with striped ribbon. Sunflower seeds were added to clear tubes and decorated with custom labels, washi tape and wraphia.

White set up boxes and boxes wrapped with white tonal striped wrapping paper were decorated with three different colours of wraphia and then used as decorations for the party.

Let guests know where to sit for lunch using our cute little nests with filled with a single hand lettered egg. The eggs for our baby shower display were decorated by the very talented hand lettering artist Doris from Love Lettering. 

I always like to use our white cake stands to display sweet treats. Get creative by preparing custom drinks in our glass bottles and set them up beside a container filled with paper straws in blue and green.

Paper lanterns and bunting made from tissue paper tassels shout "let's party". It's easy to decorate a large balloon with DIY tissue paper tassels and you can use it as a photo prop during the shower. We are waiting for a couple of lines of large balloons to come into the stores and I'll let you know when they arrive on Instagram.

I painted one of our white paper lanterns with the same acrylic craft paint that I used to decorate the mason jars. I added a little bit of water to the paint so it would have a "watercolour" effect on the paper lantern.

Here's a cute idea for a baby shower party activity - have every guest paint a onesie. Any acrylic craft paint can be made into a fabric paint by simply adding Martha Stewart's tintable fabric medium. Have guests paint the onesies using our small paper shopping bags to keep the paint from going through the fabric. Then hang the onesies up to dry on baker's twine using the bags as hangers with mini clothespins. 

Last year I created a download for "baby photo stickers". I reworked the art to co-ordinate with the colours of this gender neutral shower and you can download them here. 

You will need to use blank stickers to print the monthly photo stickers from my download. I used a 4x4x1 stationery box to package the photo sticker and an 8x8x6 set up box to package some onesies along with the photo stickers. The download contains two different options for the memory box lid - one is as shown with the "welcome baby" message and the other has no words so you can personalize it yourself with the baby's name and birth information. You can find all of my directions for this DIY project in this post. 

Thanks again to Tanya and Doris for collaborating on this display with me. 

I'm going to end with a picture of this sweet hand lettered baby's sleeping chalkboard sign that Doris sells in her Etsy shop.